INTRODUCTION TO SOCIAL MEDIA & SOCIAL NETWORKING - Federation of Families conference session

2013 Federation of Families for Children's Mental Health Conference

Session: An Introduction to Social Media & Social Networking for family governed & youth led organizations

By Dianna Brocious - Family Partner

First I should tell you that my experience with social media is almost purely hearsay. I am pretty clueless though not totally thanks to Michele Baugh at the Systems of Care Office. She is the guru of “the cloud” and anything associated in any way with it!

Pat Cambri and Crystal Karenchak were in collusion regarding my attendance of this workshop and I can say I am so glad I attended! The previous introduction to social media by Michele Baugh laid the groundwork for this one. 

Without a doubt spreading information fast and in bursts or fast and in length exists today along with a site that enables you to create your pages, date them and set them for release all at once. That site is called Hootsuite. This can put you in the position of setting up all your releases to various sites such as Facebook, Twitter etc. for an extended period of time thereby cutting your dedicated time to these efforts. In their words from their website - Improve productivity by managing all of your social networks within www.hootsuite.com The dashboard is designed for you and your team to listen engage and measure all from one simple interface.

Everyone knows about YouTube I think. If you have a video that is the place to put it to get your word out. There is also a specific channel for non-profits to use and at a billion users a month it is worth some thoughtful possibilities regarding your group!

Pinterest was a surprise for me as I am used to seeing it pop up in regards to crafts and decorating but I never thought of it in our world. The age group each of these draws in is very different as well. This is effective with the 20’s to the 40’s and not really appealing to youth. It seems you create a “board” with items of interest.

Twitter is microblogging. 140 characters total with each tweet. It may include links and users seem to be in the 25-34 yrs of age. Journalists are now using and following twitter in their fields of interest and politicians are now as well. A great way to advertise events articles but does not lend itself easily to conversations.

Facebook is the most popular and ages 13-25 and the over 60 gang use it the most. Not for Profits have done pages to great success and the recommendation is to always have two administrators. Posts with images get shared more and the more “likes” you have the better!

Tumblr is another microblog. A social network it appeals to ages 18-34. It allows users to share anything! Music, photos, color text…whatever! 

Snapchat is an app for your phone. You can send pictures/videos but only for a second or so and then it is gone!

A place called plug.dj is a public API where you can build custom extensions of plug.dj with our public API. Customize the experience for yourself and the community. plug.dj is a real-time social media experience combining music and video discovery in a fun and interactive online environment, complete with dancing avatars to match people’s personalities.

A parenting blog one of the trainers does with her sister is called www.weknowstuff.us.com.  This is a site with a host of different topics including special needs, education and autism. It looks very time consuming but how large or small you create is up to you!

A quick definition which may be helpful for clarification is that social media is a strategy and social networking is when you use that media as a tool to connect. In conclusion they gave us some sites to look at and I will list them here. Both of the trainers are out of Long Island New York and they have been at this for sometime. 

Without a doubt this is largely an untapped gold mine for advertising, educating and promoting! The ability to expand your reach, distribute information and lobby for legislative change is at your fingertips literally! You can connect with supporters, those of like minds, find similar organizations, promote your events, raise funds, call for volunteers, display articles, share resources and I could go on and on..! And I can tell you there are always more popping up as geek gurus find more nifty ways to communicate.